A brilliant edition of the Tour of Britain concluded with an exciting final stage in the Scottish Borders, as Nils Politt soloed to victory in Earlston, whilst his teammate Tim Wellens finished safely in the chasing group to seal the overall victory after taking the lead the previous day.
The pair split the race along with three of their UAE Team Emirates-XRG teammates in an exposed section of moorland over the top of the Duddy Bank climb with around 80km to go. Filippo Ganna (Netcompany Ineos) followed and worked with them to bridge across to the early breakaway, where Ben Wiggins (Great Britain) and Marcus Sander Hansen (BHS-PL Beton Bornholm) also joined the move to form an eight-rider group at the head of the race.
With Lewis Askey (NSN Cycling) and Olav Kooij (Decathlon CMA CGM) in the chasing group behind, their teams set about closing the gap to those ahead of them. However, they struggled to make any significant inroads, as UAE Team Emirates-XRG began to ride as a five-rider team time trial at the head of the race, with Ganna also continuing to pull turns.
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Keen not to let the stage go to a sprint and potentially squander their numerical advantage in the leading group, Politt then attacked with 9km to go, as they now had over a minute on the chasing group and Wellens’ green leader’s jersey looked to be secured.
Wiggins then bridged across and was initially able to follow the former German national champion, in what was an impressive ride by the 21-year-old British rider, but Politt would ultimately prove too strong for him, as he slipped back to the group behind.
Politt then rode solo to the finish in Earlston where he claimed his first win outside of Germany since his stage victory at the Tour de France in 2021, pointing to the sky as he crossed the line.
“This victory is for my grandpa,” Politt said in his post-race interview. “He passed away some weeks ago, so I needed to give him something back.”
Ganna then won the sprint from the group behind to snatch the red points jersey from the shoulders of Askey, who had to settle for second place in the general classification, as Wellens finished safely to seal the overall victory.
“It was a very successful week. We came here for the GC and then today we also have this stage victory, so everything’s been perfect,” Wellens said after the race.
“Today, to be honest, we just wanted to defend the leader’s jersey. We didn’t want to attack, we didn’t want to make it a hard race,” he continued. “We just wanted to ride defensively, but then suddenly in the crosswind, Ineos started to ride very hard. We just followed, there was a gap and then we just rode tempo with Mikkel [Bjerg], but the crosswind was so hard that the group split again, we moved the whole team to the front and we continued full to the finish. So today we can say we won thanks to Mikkel, because he made the gap.”
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